The story of Aleksander Józef Lisowski and his brutal ferocious band of mercenaries Lisowczyks (active 1607-1636)! They were an irregular unit of Polish cavalry that received no wages and was instead allowed to loot and plunder as they pleased. People were terrified of them!
They were led by Aleksander Józef Lisowski, a very brutal man who became persona non grata in Poland 1605 but would soon find his fortunes elsewhere, in Russia! Russia was in chaos in the period called Time of Troubles, and Lisowski took full advantage of that!
With his ragtag band of mercenaries Lisowski would plunder Russian villages and engaged in many battles and skirmishes between various factions, proving his worth in battles. Finally he would defend the Polish Commonwealth and was crucial in defense of Smolensk in 1612!
Lisowski and his mercenaries were extremely capable warriors and were able to defeat many opposing Russian forces, capturing and looting numerous Russian towns and villages. They would pillage, rape, murder and commit multiple other outrages!
Finally, Lisowski would fell ill in 1616 and die. But his mercenaries carried on! The mercenary life was just too alluring for them! They continued to be named after him, Lisowczycy. After the 1618 Truce of Deulino that ended Russo-Polish hostilities,they became soldiers for hire
Fortunately for them, in the same year another epic conflict started in vicinity, the Thirty Years' War. They offered their services and engaged in the famous 1620 Battle of White Mountain on Imperial side, capturing 20 enemy standards. They would continue to pillage and loot.
In fact, they would get even more ferocious as they reportedly killed even children and dogs during their raids. Emperor Ferdinand II eventually released them from service, due to numerous complaints about their behavior! Their indiscipline became legendary.
The Lisowczycy would then split in two groups, one would return to Poland while the other stayed in the war-torn Holy Roman Empire and offered their services to others. The local German population thought they were Tatar hordes of ferocious barbarians and not Christian Europeans!
Despite this horrible reputation they would eventually gain fame for Christendom as some fought against the Ottomans for the Polish Commonwealth at Cecora (1620) and Khotyn (1621). In peacetime, they would resort to banditry and get increasingly hunted down by local authorities.
By 1936 they were gone; dispersed and disbanded. They would become legends as their atrocities became forgotten and they became seen as the defenders of Commonwealth and Christendom against the Schismatics, Protestant heretics and Mohammedans with which they fought in battles.
This is related to the Polish-Russian war of 1605-1618 and the battle of Klushino I wrote about today. Those were extremely dark and brutal times for Russia! And at the same time, an era of glory and prestige for the mighty Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth!
The Catalan Company, Societatis exercitus catalanorum, was one of the most effective elite mercenary forces in history! In 1303 these Catalan warriors were hired by the Byzantine empire to fight against Turks. The fury they would unleash on those far lands would become legendary!
The story of the Catalan Company is one of the most amazing stories in European history yet it is now forgotten by Europeans and exists only as a terrifying memory of the descendants of people who were terrorized by these ferocious mercenaries. I will bring this story back!
The Catalan Company's epic journey started as they arrived in Constantinople in 1303. But like all great stories, the legend began much earlier, in the remote Iberian mountains during the dark time of Moorish occupation of Spain. It began with men they called the almogàvers.
Today is the anniversary of the battle of Klushino fought on 4 July 1610. The legendary Polish winged hussars triumphed over the much larger force of Russian and Swedish armies aided by various European mercenaries, in one the decisive battles of the 1605-1618 Polish-Russian War.
This battle happened at a time where European wars were determined by infantry, yet in Eastern Europe, the legendary Polish winged hussar cavalry ruled the vast plains of the mighty Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, ruled by the militant Catholic pious king Sigismund III Vasa.
The power of the Polish hussars was in their versatility. Originally a mercenary light cavalry unit, the Poles perfected and adapted it to suit the early modern Eastern European warfare. They were highly mobile but powerful at the same time, fighting with multiple weapons.
Today I will talk about the epic 1288 battle of Worringen in which the renowned knight John, Duke of Brabant, excelled! He fought against the forces of Siegfried II of Westerburg, the Archbishop of Cologne! They fought for the possession of the disputed wealthy Duchy of Limburg!
John I, Duke of Brabant, was one of the most gifted and chivalrous princes of his time. He was described as a perfect model of a feudal prince in the days of chivalry, brave, adventurous, excelling in every form of active exercise, fond of display, generous in temper.
John of Brabant who would be called "the Victorious", delighted in tournaments, and was always eager personally to take part in jousts! This would also later lead to his death as he was mortally wounded on a brutal tournament held as part of some marriage festivities.
Perhaps the most famous member from the house of Babenberg was Leopold V "the Virtuous", the crusader Austrian duke known for imprisoning the renowned Richard the Lionheart when he traveled through Austria on his long way back from the Holy Land. Why did he do this? I explain...
Leopold V wanted to join Babarossa for the Third Crusade but his disputes with the Hungarian king Béla III prevented him from going. However when the Emperor died in 1190, Leopold decided to travel to the crusade by ship from Venice, arriving in time for the 1191 siege of Acre.
After Barbarossa's death his son Frederick VI Duke of Swabia took command but he too died during the siege of Acre. Thus the command of the Imperial forces was given to Leopold V. When King Philip II of France and King Richard I the Lionheart of England arrived, Acre surrendered.
One of the famous members of the illustrious Babenberg house was also Ida of Formbach-Ratelnberg who led her own army on the Crusade of 1101 where she and her army were ambushed by Turks. Ekkerhard of Aura reported she was killed in the fighting but rumors persisted she survived.
She was described as a woman of unusual beauty and married the margrave of Austria Leopold II of Babenberg. Her participation in crusades leads to speculations that she was very pious, but there could have been other reasons such as family ties. Her family origin is uncertain.
Her fate after the ambush by the Seljuks is just as mysterious as her origin and was an inspiration for legends. Albert von Aachen wrote that she survived and was taken to a harem. There were also ridiculous legends that she was the mother of Zengi, the famous atabeg of Mosul.
Flagellants appear in the Kingdom of Hungary! "At [Béla IV’s] time, in the year of our Lord 1263, the common people roamed everywhere about the country beating themselves with whips." (Chronica de gestis Hungarorum) What did they want, where did they come from? I explain...
The Flagellants were a recurrent Christian movement, one of its outbreaks expected the arrival of the age of the Holy Spirit after 1260! It originated in Perugia in Italy Thousands of people, known as Flagellants, whipped
themselves publicly!
People attribute the rise of flagellants in Italy to the brutal 1250s decade where tensions between Guelphs and Ghibellines resulted in bloody scuffles and laying waste to countryside, culminating in 1260 battle of Montaperto, where Ghibellines butchered the Guelphs!